“I don’t understand it,” he said flatly, his eyes empty of expression. “Every waking moment I long for Thor’s call; without the god’s voice, my life is nothing, and I am nothing. The Warfather has been my vision and my purpose all these long years. Yet now, as well, I…I fear his voice, I shrink from what I have done, and what I may do again. There is no path forward, Nessa. No matter what you say, I think, now, there is no way for me to follow. I see the horror in your eyes; you cannot hide it. As Thor’s warrior, I earn only your loathing. And yet, without that calling I am a failure in the eyes of my people, and in my own eyes: a craven coward, crippled by war fetter. I am a lost man: a lost cause.”

Nessa said nothing. She felt as if she were being pulled in two directions at once, and it hurt; it hurt as if her heart were breaking.

“You should go,” he said, setting down the cup. “It is not right that you should be here alone with me. Take your lantern and go back to the cottage.”

“If that’s what you want.” By all the powers, it was a terrible hurt indeed, and everything he said seemed to make it worse. She should not have come here; she should have listened to Rona, who was a wise woman, after all.

“What I want doesn’t matter,” he said.

Nessa got up, leaving her tea untouched by the fire. “I’m sorry,” she managed. “I need some time.”

Eyvind nodded. His face was ashen white, the eyes like dark holes. It seemed a terrible thing to leave him now, but how could she stay? She could not look at him without imagining young Taran facing up to him, and the axe whistling through the air on its mission of death.

“Good night.” His voice was the merest thread of sound. “Really, I think it best if you forget me, as Thor has done. I deserve no more than that.”

There was no more sleep that night. Nessa lay wide-eyed on her bed, listening to the small creatures rustling in the roof thatch, until she judged it time to rise. It was still dark; the winter days were short indeed on the islands, and one became accustomed to doing what must be done by lamplight. She made up the fire; she brewed tea but could not drink it. She swept the floor, made dough for bannocks, fed Rona’s scrawny chickens. Then she packed her little bag with the few possessions she had brought from home, and sat waiting for the old woman to wake.